Drum Machine Designer/Quick Sampler -similar plugins available?

[RhythmTrax]

Does anyone know of a Logic compatible (AU) plugin which works in a similar way as Drum Machine Designer? I think Quick Sampler may be useful as well.

The reason I ask is because I use an older version (10.4.8) of Logic (I can't upgrade because of hardware and software limitations elsewhere on my Mac) but could use a simple sample-playback instrument, mostly for creating drumsets, but for other things as well if possible (i.e. instruments where I would map a sample across several keys).

Edited August 23, 2022 by RhythmTrax

[Atlas007]

Have you tried Ultrabeat?

Otherwise, there is Battery from Native Instrument.

[RhythmTrax]

Actually I found out that I already have Drum Machine Designer here in Logic Pro X 10.4.8!
But it seems Apple have gone to great lengths trying to hide it as it's not available when you create a new instrument track (so I have to select "Empty channel strip" as the instrument), then I have to add the instrument by clicking on "Instrument" in the track info and scroll almost all the way to the bottom as it's neither found among Logic's instruments near the top of the list (below the "Recent" section), nor on the "Logic" section at the very bottom.

As far as I can see I'm not able to add it to my own custom instrument categories either. Very strange.

That aside I'm super happy as this looks to make it very easy to create my own drum machine setups simply by dragging sample-files over to the pads (as shown below where I've replaced a preset kit's bass drum with a Linndrum sample):

It's however not obvious how to save my own drum machine. The only "Save" option I can find is the "Save as" button in the Library section, but this appears only to save the selected pad's sample.

So how do I go about this in order to create, say a complete Linndrum?

Thanks for suggesting Ultrabeat. I've tried it, but find the user interface ugly, messy and complicated. Still I noticed that you can add your own samples (I haven't yet figured out how to actually select and use them once they've been added) so it's probably a good alternative if I don't get Drum Machine Designer to work with my own samples.

Battery I haven't looked into yet but see it's quite expensive (US$ 200) so that would be a last resort.
Still, I have my hope set on Drum Machine Designer 😀

Edited August 24, 2022 by RhythmTrax

[des99]

Drum Machine Designer is not an "Instrument" in itself, it's a kind of shell that hosts other instruments - hence the differentiation. It is a little confusing, and Apple tidied up and reworked the implementation of this significantly in 10.5, so it's less confusing and makes more sense.

You'll have to work with what you have, of course.

[JakobP]

1 hour ago, RhythmTrax said:

It's however not obvious how to save my own drum machine. The only "Save" option I can find is the "Save as" button in the Library section, but this appears only to save the selected pad's sample.
So how do I go about this in order to create, say a complete Linndrum?

1 hour ago, RhythmTrax said:

Thanks for suggesting Ultrabeat. I've tried it, but find the user interface ugly, messy and complicated. Still I noticed that you can add your own samples (I haven't yet figured out how to actually select and use them once they've been added) so it's probably a good alternative if I don't get Drum Machine Designer to work with my own samples.

 

I never used "the old" DMD, but asfaik, it's based on a Track Stack containing a multi output  Ultrabeat... If you select the "main" stack track, the save option in the Library should allow you to save the whole patch as a new DMD kit. Hth...

[RhythmTrax]

5 hours ago, des99 said:

Drum Machine Designer is not an "Instrument" in itself, it's a kind of shell that hosts other instruments - hence the differentiation. It is a little confusing, and Apple tidied up and reworked the implementation of this significantly in 10.5, so it's less confusing and makes more sense.

You'll have to work with what you have, of course.

OK, I see.
So it's basically just a user interface which ties together several other instruments?

Yes, I find this quite confusing too. The track appears to be a "folder" which reveals all the individual drum/percussion parts on their own track when opened. This is great of course, because I can treat each sound individually regarding panning, levels and effects, but the built in effects is confusing. I'd rather just use the track sends and returns as I recently learned how to set up in Logic.

Since I can't use Logic 10.5 I'll have to learn how to use what I already have.
Hopefully, when figured out I'll have my favourite drumsets available and don't have to mess around too much with this again.

[des99]

7 minutes ago, RhythmTrax said:

The track appears to be a "folder" which reveals all the individual drum/percussion parts on their own track when opened.

It's a Track Stack, as JacobP mentioned above.

[RhythmTrax]

5 hours ago, JakobP said:

I never used "the old" DMD, but asfaik, it's based on a Track Stack containing a multi output  Ultrabeat... If you select the "main" stack track, the save option in the Library should allow you to save the whole patch as a new DMD kit. Hth...

Do you mean that after I've dragged/dropped my own samples into an existing kit I click once on the "main" drum track (marked "1" in the screenshot below), then press the "Save" button (marked "2") which will save the new kit?

Will I have to place my samples in some specific Logic-related file location, or does Logic internally copy what I just dragged/dropped on its own so it isn't reliant on that nor the original source location of my sample files?

[JakobP]

I never used that incarnation of DMD, so can't tell... But shouldn't be too hard to try this out in a test project ?

Edited August 24, 2022 by JakobP

[RhythmTrax]

I've got it! 😀
By experimenting a bit, then learning the missing bits from this Youtube video I found out the following:

1) you can create a new instrument (i.e. a LinnDrum as I wanted to make) by either starting off by selecting an existing drumkit -then replacing the existing drumsounds in that kit with your own (I preferred this as you can quickly see which type of sound is there from before), or.... you can choose "Empty kit" for a completely empty kit where you start from scratch.

2) Add the samples you like, pitch, pan, choose the effect levels etc. You can also add icons for the various drum sounds if you like (right-click on the existing drum's icon which will be a blue waveform icon, then select a new one).

3) Save your new drumkit by following these steps:

•  First, close the Drum Machine Designer window by clicking on the Instrument's button in the channel strip
  
  (the reason for this being that if you've selected an instrument's pad then try to save it seems to want to save the individual sample rather than the whole drum setup)
  ...... Another way to do it is to click on the drum setup's name (top area of the of the Drum Machine Designer window). This will deselect whichever pad you've pressed.
   
• You can now press the "Save" button which will bring up the file-selector. It should go to the "Instrument" folder (~/Music/Audio Music Apps/Patches/Instrument/). Choose a suitable name for your drum setup and save it.
  
   

4) If you want to use that drum setup in a new project or as a new track:

• Create a new instrument track with an empty channel strip
  
   
• Now, in the "Library" section of Logic, go to "User patches" and simply select the drum setup you've created. That's it!
  

 

Here's what the end result of my new LinnDrum looks like. I started off with an already existing setup and haven't yet removed all the sounds I'm not going to use. I've also added custom icons. By the way, does anyone know where to find the icons used in the default drum setups in Drum Machine Designer?

Just like JakobP said, it's all based on the UltraBeat instrument. I found out that I can easily access its current setup by first clicking on the C1 key drumpad (usually the bass drum) which will then bring up a channel strip with the Ultrabeat instrument:

UltraBeat appears rather confusing and complex IMHO, but I understand that a lot of the underlaying settings of the current drum setup can be edited here. I'm going to investigate this further as I want the hihat to become monophonic (i.e. a closed hihat will "choke" the open hihat's decay) and for some reason one of the pads which I replaced with a conga sound isn't tunable.

Edited August 25, 2022 by RhythmTrax

[des99]

Yep, you got how it works.

It's been streamlined a bit further in 10.5, as each cell can now have a Quick Sampler, or analog synth drum, which removes the shell around Ultrabeat and is a lot easier to work with individual samples (Quick Sampler is great).

This guide should be useful for other 10.4.x users struggling with this, thanks for summing it up!

[RhythmTrax]

You're welcome 😀
Thanks to this Youtube video (at around 10:16) I learnt how to choke the open hihat by creating a "group" for both hihat samples:

Logic Pro 10.5 sure would be a nice upgrade if I could, but my version 10.4.8 is still lightyears ahead of what I could do back in the 90s, so I'm not going to complain 😉

[RhythmTrax]

Since this is all based upon the UltraBeat instrument, how do you bypass its limitations when assigning percussion sounds while maintaining the General MIDI (GM) drum-mapping standard for percussion sounds (which typically go to the upper part of the keyboard)?
Here's what Apple's Logic Pro X "instruments" user-manual has to say about UltraBeat:

Quote

 

“The distribution of drum voices across the MIDI keyboard is as follows: a single drum voice is assigned to each of the first 24 MIDI keys (spanning MIDI notes C1 to B2). The 25th drum voice is assigned to the keys from the 25th MIDI key (C3) and above, enabling you to play this sound chromatically.”

 

This would make it very difficult to set up a percussion drum machine such as the Roland TR-727 or Yamaha RX-21L (Latin). Are there any non-obvious workarounds to this?

[David Nahmani]

1 minute ago, RhythmTrax said:

Since this is all based upon the UltraBeat instrument, how do you bypass its limitations when assigning percussion sounds while maintaining the General MIDI (GM) drum-mapping standard for percussion sounds (which typically go to the upper part of the keyboard)?

Drum Machine Designer is no longer based on the UltraBeat instrument - it uses new plug-ins: Quick Sampler for sample-based sounds, and Drum Synth (which is based on the UltraBeat sound engine) for synth-based sounds. 

DMD however has its own mapping which is done on the DMD grid, you are free to map whatever MIDI key to whatever sound you want. 

[RhythmTrax]

I'm still on Logic Pro X 10.4.8 and assume the changes don't apply to me.

Yes, I noticed you can put any sample to whichever pad I want in Drum Machine Designer.
So I wanted to place one Linndrum conga sample in two places (low conga at E3 and high conga at D#3 according to the GM drum map layout), then tune one up and the other down, but as you see from the screenshot it's not possible to tune as well as many other things. I gather this is because the key is above C3 meaning the UltraBeat limitations quoted previously.

... and for comparison, here's a snare at D1 (i.e. below C3 meaning the UltraBeat limitations don't apply here if I understand correctly) which has all the controls available:

 

Edited September 1, 2022 by RhythmTrax